Relative
by Nexlei
Summary: James contemplates life, maturity, those nasty death eaters, and the Marauders on the eve of his seventeenth birthday. One-shot. Marauder era. Sirius and James friendship.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

From James' point of view.

Relative

I'd like to know, _exactly_, what is maturity? Is it something that just appears one day, while you're drinking a cup of tea and pouring over a herbology textbook? Is it some kind of epiphany, where you find, to your great surprise, that everything just makes sense all of a sudden; who you're meant to be and what you're meant to do… I suppose those would be nice, you know, to just become an adult one day, not realizing it until after it's all been done. And by then, what would you care if you're some ridiculous square, as far as I can see all of the ridiculous squares that I know seem to enjoy themselves just fine. Right? Right? Oh who am I kidding?

Really though, I'm not entirely certain that I even believe in growing up. It's just another fictional story, something you would find in the Tales of Beatle the Bard, meant only to amuse children and give the adults some peace of mind. Growing up is a ridiculous notion, because quite frankly, I have yet to find any proof that it actually does happen. People don't grow up, they just get more experience.

Here I am, about eight minutes away from my marvelous seventeenth birthday, eight minutes from being an adult, completely of age in our world, and I've decided to entirely give up on the concept of it all. Though, I mean, how couldn't I?

I just look at people, Sirius's family for instance, bunch of bloody wackjobs they are. Running about like they're the absolute epitome of fine existence and expecting everyone to kiss their lowly little feet. How they justify it? Blood status. _Blood status_ it's like going back to the bloody playground. Where everyone always seemed to have a problem with the trivial "Well, I won't play with you because you're a four eyed _freak_" or "Look at that ugly kid! Let's stay away from him, it may be contagious". It's exactly like that, like, on a larger scale they, those people who believe in things like blood status and run around dressed up with their ridiculous masks— the cowards, they're exactly like children on a playground, just picking at each other's differences, that omnipresent social hierarchy, the one on the playground, is still around. On a much bigger scale though it may be.

Sirius is pouring the firewhiskey while Remus rubs his eyes. Peter is leaning, lids half closed, against an armchair. And I'm just staring into the melancholy living room. In its immaculate way, it would look so much less welcoming it my best mates weren't sitting by me. House elves clean too well these days. I bite my lip, wishing this celebration had been on better terms, in better times. Hoping beyond hope that this time next year, maybe, just maybe all of this stupid business would be over and life could go back to the way it had always been, praying, begging god, for _her_ to be alright.

Luckily Sirius has enough cheer to make up for the rest of us. It is after all, his best mate's coming of age. The last of the Marauders to reach this milestone.

Seven minutes and counting.

"How does it feel mate?' Sirius asks suddenly, sliding a mug, filled to the brim, into my unsuspecting hands. He clapped me on the shoulder, excited, bouncy, on edge. I just shrug smiling at him.

"Seven more minutes still, I'll let you know when I get there".

"Right, _right_," Sirius continues, and was fully prepared to open his mouth to suggest something absolutely stupendous when I cut him off.

"Mum made me promise no fireworks, she has to get up for work tomorrow," I say, smiling to myself. Sirius nods and the conversation ends. In a way, the four of us don't need conversation, we were almost beyond it. Sirius knew the reason for my melancholy mood, my ridiculous brooding on the eve of the most important birthday I would ever have. But he was a good enough best mate to not bring it up. The future would always be there for talking, and for now, perhaps, we needed a little joy and firewhiskey. The time was disappearing fast.

"D'you think James's mum will make some chocolate cake for tomorrow?" Peter interrupts the contemplative silence as it he hadn't noticed it was there.

"Always thinking of your stomach first Wormtail," Sirius chides, and I could feel the glare that Peter sends him as it shifted the air in the room.

"Lay off it, 'course there'll be cake Wormtail, there is no party without cake".

"I'd drink to that!" Sirius says. Five minutes.

"I recon that you'd drink to anything," Moony mutters and we all laugh. No one was quite so good at stating a fact as Remus.

"That's not entirely true," Sirius had to defend himself, who wouldn't? Though, Moony would undoubtedly set the record strait.

"You showed up to your final exams hung-over last June… remember the potions one, reckon you're lucky that Slughorn didn't throw a fit".

"But I got an O!," Sirius nearly shouts, nearly, before remembering that we were the floor below my parents, who valued sleep above gold, getting well into the numbers as they were.

"Only 'cause Prongs was your partner," Wormtail says, and Remus beams triumphantly.

"Will you wankers get off my case, I'd had a bloody _awful_ day" and thus did silence sneak into the room once again, as quickly as it had left. Funny how it can do that. Four minutes.

Sirius's cousin, Bellatrix, brilliant at spells though she is, is decidedly lacking in a few things. Sense, for one, and feelings, for another. There is something frighteningly off about her, like all of her skills and talents have come at some awful price. She is a prime example for my case that maturity may not really exist. Maybe, when it comes down to it, people are just good or bad or both. But do people have the power to change?

Well, long story short, Sirius was dragging his Ravenclaw blonde-of-the-week down to his favourite broom closet to have a nice snog. Thing was, the closet was occupied. His scantly clad cousin, her own boy toy (Rodolphus Lestrange, same crowd, also a complete git) were there, oblivious. And he saw something that he wasn't meant to see. A particular tattoo on her arm. And it gave him enough of a shock to react in a way that he was, as of yet, unfamiliar with. He just shut the door and walked away. Taking his Ravenclaw blonde of the week somewhere else, having his naughty way with her, we all presume, and proceeding to drink himself into near oblivion that night. The very night before the Potions exam.

Bottle after bottle he downed, leaning against the edge of his four poster bed, silent and pale. Like nothing I had ever seen. He didn't move, he didn't cry, he didn't do anything. And I could do nothing because I knew that, despite all of the drama of the previous summer, and all of the things that he's had to put up with, that this was the first time that it had become real for him. The entire war. Even still, for me, it was not real. That moment of clarity had not yet come.

And that's where it all comes together. All of the brooding, and the spaced thoughts, and the quiet of a room that should be waking up half of England. It had become real to me, the second I had picked up The Daily Prophet this morning. The second that I had seen what had been done. What _he_ had done.

Lily Evans is the girl that I'm going to marry. She just doesn't know it yet. It's become a motto for me. Like my own secret mantra. This morning, I opened the daily prophet, and scanned the headlines with the usual wary eye. Death and displacement and general despair had become commonplace in their own sickening ways. But then I saw it. The featured article, a tale of a Hogwarts student who had successfully side-along apperated her three muggle family members out of harms way after they had come home to find Death Eaters waiting for them in their living room. It was a happening so lucky, that it bordered on ridiculous.

And me, as I sat in the comfort of my kitchen, with the Marauders around me and my mother humming softly as she fried some bacon and eggs, I felt as if a knife had been stuck in my heart. Like every inch of me ached at the prospect of anything happening to Lily. Lily, who I was going to marry. Even if she didn't know it yet. More than anything, at that time I wanted two things. The first was for Lily to be with me, here, and under the safety of a Fidelius charm and several other works of magical brilliance. Even if that meant she would fight with me, insult me, call me ridiculous names. Bloody hell, she could kiss the giant squid on my couch if only she would come here, where I could know without a doubt that she was ok. The second thought was much darker, much worse than those that I'm accustomed to and was followed by absolutely no remorse. I wanted to find those son-of-a-bitch Death Eaters who thought that they had a right to lay a finger on Lily Evans or her family… that they had a right to enter her home and I wanted to make them pay. To make them pay for putting her through all of that. For trying to hurt her because of what? Blood status?

At the same time, I was immensely proud of what she had done. But the shock of it had not worn off. And the shock didn't wear off until midday. I had refused several games of Quiddich, and had taken to pacing any given room that I was in. I'm convinced that had it been under nearly any other circumstances, Sirius, Remus and Peter would be shooting things like "Bloody mental" "Doesn't have his head on straight" or "Did you hit your head on a rock you dolt!" at me. But they didn't this time.

Three minutes. It was around noon that I wrote to Lily, telling her that it would be ok for her and her family to stay here, asking if she was alright. And I waited all day, pacing, sitting, standing, playing exploding snap and loosing miserably. It was around seven that I received a reply. Three short lines. _"Thank you Potter but my family and I are fine. Enjoy your holidays. Lily Evans"_

Despite all of the panic, the worry, the angst, I was suddenly brought back to the simple and dreadful thought that I had never even kissed Lily Evans and this reply was perhaps the kindest, if not the coldest, thing that she had ever communicated to me, written or not. Remus was always going on about the many positives of maturity in progressing a relationship. Maybe it would, you know, if it exists.

"Damn it Prongs, you need to smile! It's your bloody birthday party!" Sirius exclaimed, suddenly, his glass of firewhiskey now only half full, and slammed on my mother's good coffee table, denting it. After a muttered _reparo_ and a slight smirk he turned to Remus, "Right! Right! Shouldn't he be a little bit happier. Spreading some bloody BIRTHDAY CHEER".

"Sirius, I don't think that James is feeling completely…"

"That time of the month again eh Moony? Always getting all bloody empathetic and…"

"Sirius, shut up you prat," I mutter, wanting to kick him, "It's my bloody party" Two minutes.

Sirius took my advice and shut up, refilling his mug to its original state and leaving it be.

Really, he just wanted us all to be happy. Maybe he is the most mature of us all. But I doubt it. Maybe the wisest was Remus, who followed the rules and had more tact than the three of us combined. Maybe it was Peter, who lived in his own world, a place where nothing could touch him. It could be me, the one who pinned for the girl who wouldn't give him the time of day, the girl who would probably point him in the opposite direction of a clock if the occasion ever arose.

"You ever feel like we're just living in that eerie quiet before something big happens?" I mutter, my best mates look at me. Remus bites his lower lip, Peter scrunches his nose.

"Every damn day," Sirius replies, Remus nods, and Peter looks down with frown lines appearing on his chubby cheeks, One minute.

"What do you reckon we do?"

"I reckon we celebrate your birthday" Spoken like a true best mate. Sirius looks at me, our eyes meeting and he nodded his head. Answering the question that he had avoided. We were the Marauders. That was the answer. And that was all there was to it. Together, we would sink or swim. Together we would win or loose. An unspoken bond, I realized in the last minute of my sixteenth year, before this business was over, it would be all of us or none of us.

The clock began to chime, a sound from my childhood, each chime bringing me closer and closer to adulthood, closer to maturity and life and everything. And it ended.

Glasses clank with the enthusiasm that had been previously absent. Cheers louder than my parents had requested fill the room and we all drink. Again and again to stupid things, to brilliant things.

"TO PRONGS! MAY HE NOT SPLINCH HIMSELF"

"TO THE YEAR HE FINALLY GETS EVANS"

"TO THE LAST YEAR OF HOGWARTS"  
"JUST ONE MORE YEAR OF DOUBLE POTIONS"

"DUNGBOMBS AND THEIR MANY USES IN THE GRADUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL DECAY OF ONE HOGWARTS CARETAKER"

"TO MRS. NORRISS"

"TO FIREWHISKEY"

"TO THE MAP"

"TO THE DAY SNIVELLUS USES SHAMPOO"

"TO MISCHIEF"

I spent my first night as an of age wizard passed out on the floor with my Hogwarts friends. Perhaps maturity is simply relative.

a/n This is the first Harry Potter fanfic that I've ever posted. Like pretty much everything I do, I wrote it on a complete whim. I tried to experiment a bit with the present tense, which was fun, but leaves me a bit shaky on the grammatical aspect, as some things do sound better in the past. I believe that this is also the first thing that I've done on first-person on this site. It has it's advantages and disadvantages, and in all honesty, I myself prefer to read most things from the third person. Characters heads can be a messy place after all, which also has it's advantages and disadvantages.

So leave a review and tell me what you got out of this. Or how you liked it or if you think that my writing is complete and utter crap. I love hearing my reader's opinions, good, bad, ugly. Grade me on the Hogwarts scale if you like. I'm interested to see how many T's I get.


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